Expectations and Evenings
by starry19
Summary: "...And then she'd gotten on a plane. He didn't mind this time, especially since he had gotten on the same one."


**AN**: I needed to write something, so here you are. This is messy, but it was just sort of what happened. I know I've been rather absent from the fandom in particular, but I've been very, very busy. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it'll be calming down any time soon, so hopefully this little piece will tide you over for a while.

Is it season 7 yet?!

**Expectations and Evenings**

After everything that happened, he would have hardly thought he had any fear left in him. He had faced down so much, had dealt with the worst things he could have imagined and some he hadn't even dreamt of, not in his darkest hours. He had come through it all.

Indeed, in this moment, he was happy. Lisbon hadn't gotten on the plane, hadn't left him to his misery and his demons and his emptiness.

She had saved him yet again, wrapping him in her saintly wings.

And then she'd gotten on a plane. He didn't mind this time, especially since he had gotten on the same one.

Due to various reasons, they hadn't gotten seats beside each other. Possibly when your FBI supervisor has to pull some very weighty strings to keep you from getting arrested and out of the state, he isn't able to be particularly choosy about seating arrangements.

So he spent the next several hours staring at the back of her head, three rows up and across the aisle from him.

They were somewhere close to the border of Texas when he felt the first thrill of fear touch him.

For the first two thirds of the flight, he had allowed himself to be absolutely and totally hopeful, a man in love who had his feelings returned by a woman who, if he stretched a bit, was close enough to touch.

But now...he was beginning to realize that for the first time in nearly a decade and a half, there were..._expectations_ on him that had nothing to do with solving a crime. He had just chased down a plane to stop Lisbon from leaving, had kissed her, had dared to rest his hand against the curve of her neck for a moment, reveling in the silky warmth of her skin.

Clearly, she wasn't anticipating things going back to the way they were.

They couldn't.

In truth, he didn't want them to. Really, he didn't.

But he had existed so long on the fringes, understanding so much about Lisbon while giving very little of himself in return. That would have to change.

She would be _expecting_ it.

That was where the fear kicked in. The idea of lowering his defenses, of laying his soul bare before her, all of the imperfections and damages, taped together, but clumsily, as though by a child who only had a vague idea of how the thing was supposed to look.

Fragile.

Breakable.

Since he had lost Angela and Charlotte, since he had consciously returned to the world, he had understood that the only way for him to survive was to be hard, cold. Keep everyone out. Slowly, with time and patience and forgiveness, Lisbon had found cracks in his facade. He had thought about patching the holes, reinforcing the weak spots. But then he had felt the first stirrings of connection, of affection - someone knew _him_, if only a little.

However, there was still distance. Secrets he didn't share, thoughts he concealed, feelings he hid deep in his his much-broken heart.

All of that was going to end.

His hands were shaking.

Lisbon waited for him as the other passengers disembarked, her small bag over one arm. Her lips were turned up warmly, and he marveled at how sweetly beautiful she looked in the light of late morning.

He could kiss her again, could slide his tongue against hers, hands in her hair or tracing patterns down her slender back.

He repressed a shudder of want, grabbing his own bag that Cho had thoughtfully brought to the airport.

Since they had left the TSA holding cell, he hadn't touched her. He had considered why that was, finally deciding that he simply didn't know how. Yes, obviously, he knew _how_ to touch a woman. But he didn't know how _Lisbon_ wanted, needed him to touch her.

Their shoulders brushed as they walked down the long hallway that led to the airport proper, her left against his right. He thought about taking her hand, but then remembered that his wheeled suitcase was in his right hand as well.

It would be a simple fix, though, and years of being a carnival genius had given him very nimble fingers. Transferring a suitcase handle from right to left was nothing so complicated as picking pockets or cheating at cards.

But it seemed infinitely more difficult.

And were they (was she) alright with that? Were they now the couple that held hands in the airport?

By the time he came to the conclusion that yes, he wanted to be, it was too late. Lisbon had ducked over to the first Starbucks she saw, and he waited just outside, feeling awkward.

He was suddenly desperate for them to regain their balance, to be, well, themselves.

When Lisbon rejoined him, he forced himself to relax, and he smiled at her gigantic cup of over-priced coffee. "Wow," he said, voice still a little hoarse. "Someone's serious about her caffeine intake this morning."

She raised a delicately arched eyebrow, but her eyes were amused. "Well, someone has been up for nearly thirty hours because someone else decided to finally get off his ass and _do_ something."

He took his suitcase in the hand farthest from her, then clasped their fingers together. Action felt good, but not quite as good as being connected to her.

"Better late than never," he quipped as they began walking again.

Her thumb brushed over his wrist, a very deliberate caress.

"You were cutting it pretty close, mister," she retorted, expression disapproving, but her words were wrapped in flirtatiousness.

"Nonsense," he argued, "I probably had a good five, maybe even ten minutes to spare. I could have stopped for donuts."

She chuckled, and the sound went straight to his heart.

"Speaking of donuts," she said, "what do you say to getting some food? I'm starving. I haven't eaten since lunch yesterday."

Right, she hadn't, because she'd thrown water in his face instead of sitting down for dinner with him.

They shared a cab to a nearby diner, holding hands in the backseat. This time, she had been the one to reach for him, and he hid his smile.

After a quick meal of eggs for him and bacon and hashbrowns for her, he was once again at a loss. What was their next move?

Lisbon looked similarly lost, cheeks slightly pink. He wondered what she was thinking.

She took a deep breath, then met his eyes. "What do we do now?" she asked, sounding so helpless that he laughed outright.

He held her gaze, and felt the color rise to his own face. "Teresa," he asked, surprised at how even his voice was, "would you like to come over and spend the day with me?"

There was a pause, and he could see how pleased his words had made her. "Yes," she said, a little formally. "I would."

She had even forgotten to object to the Airstream.

An hour and a half later, he was pacing, looking through the small, curtained windows, wondering if he could make her suddenly appear by sheer force of will. He doubted it - if such a thing were possible, she would have been with him in Venezuela. It was incredible, how much he had missed her when he was gone. It was different than the way he missed Angela...Lisbon was a few connecting flights away. And he couldn't have her.

He needed to tell her that, probably. There were a lot of things he needed to tell her.

Running a hand down his freshly-shaven jaw, he peered out the window again. He didn't have a plan. He was operating solely on what his heart was telling him to do.

It was liberating, and vastly terrifying.

There was a flash of sunlight that shot through the trailer, like prisms refracted off the sheen of an approaching car. His head whipped around.

And there she was, keys jingling merrily in her hand as she walked towards his door. He opened it before she could knock, hungrily taking in her appearance. She had showered - he could smell her shampoo and her vanilla body wash. Her hair fell in loose waves down her back, like she had just blow-dried it and left it to do what it wanted. Her lips were lightly tinted. He wondered what they tasted like now.

Well, he could find out.

Lisbon had caught him looking at her mouth. It didn't take an expert to see the want on her face. He imagined he wore a very similar expression.

He dipped his head slightly, gauging her reaction, seeing the pulse pick up in the base of her throat. Moving slower than he had the first time, very conscious that there wasn't a table between them now, he stepped forward, one hand resting on her narrow waist. The other went to her precious face, tipping her chin up again.

And he kissed her.

Apple, he decided absently. She was wearing apple lip balm.

It was his new favorite thing in the world.

He kept the pressure of his mouth light, undemanding, steady. The remaining distance between them should have been negligible, but he could have wept in gratitude when Lisbon closed it, fingers locking at the small of his back. His hand went from her chin to her hair, the dark strands feeling like silk.

Daring now, he touched his tongue to her lower lip, and she moaned very softly into his mouth as she opened for him. Mint toothpaste and just a hint of her vanilla latte from earlier.

He pulled back, and expression dismayed, she tried to follow, but he pressed a soft trail of kisses to her jaw and she relented, hands going to the fine hair at his nape. There was a spot just behind her ear that made her tremble, another where her shoulder and neck met that made her moan again. His nose followed the curve of her shirt, the slight 'v' allowing him to explore the fragile wings of her collarbone unimpeded.

This was nearly overwhelming. Her scent in his nose, lithe body pressed against him, soft skin under his lips. His senses were reeling.

Lisbon tried to tug his mouth back, hands insistent in his hair, and he let her, smothering a grin when he felt her stand on her tiptoes to reach him better.

He slowed them down, softened the slant of his kisses, putting longer breaks between them until they were simply standing with their foreheads pressed together, eyes still shut. Then he pulled her flush to his chest, his chin on the top of her head, breathing a little faster than normal.

"I missed you," he whispered into her hair.

Her smile was in her voice. "I missed you, too."

He had no idea how long they stood there, wrapped around each other like, well, like lovers. It was by far the closest they had ever been, and for the longest.

She was the one who finally sighed and raised her head from its spot against his heart, offering him a grin. He returned it, then ushered her over to the small couch.

"Can I get you something to drink?" he asked. "I don't have coffee, sorry, but tea? Wine? I have a bottle of some stuff that's pretty sweet. You'd like it."

"Jane, it's 12:30," she told him, glancing at the small clock over his shoulder. "A little early to be drinking, isn't it?"

He shrugged and brought the bottle out anyway. "It's probably a holiday somewhere," he answered. "If nothing else, it's a special occasion today."

She was still smiling when he handed her a glass. He raised his, toasting her theatrically, then sat beside her.

They were quiet for a few minutes.

"So," Lisbon began, swirling her wine.

"So," he echoed in the same flat tone.

Abruptly, she started to laugh. He thought he had a pretty good idea of what was so funny.

"We're quite a pair, aren't we?" he asked, relaxing and stretching out his legs in front of him. He slung an arm around her shoulders, and she obligingly scooted closer.

She sighed. "I thought this was going to be so easy," she confessed. "Natural."

His chest tightened a bit, and he tamped down on his worry. "It will be," he assured her. "We're just figuring some things out, finding our way. Give this some transition time."

He hoped he sounded like he knew what he was talking about. He kissed the top of her head, then took another sip of his wine. It was definitely a special occasion sort of day.

Lisbon snuggled into him, and he felt a deep sense of contentment. "Well, I'm pretty good at waiting, at least where you're concerned."

"I'm sorry," he murmured.

He felt her frown. "For what?"

He shrugged around her. "For taking so long. I don't mean just in regards to Pike...but in general. I know I have a lot of time to make up for."

Lisbon sat up. "That's not what I mean," she protested. "And you don't have to make up for anything...well, maybe for the last couple of months and not just _telling_ me how you felt...but before that, no."

He looked at her questioningly, and she took a deep breath and a large drink, plainly fortifying herself. "Jane, you know I've been in love with you for years." Despite the seriousness of her tone, he couldn't help the large smile that crossed his face. She'd never said it, not like that.

"I love you, too," he interrupted, and she wore her own silly grin for a second.

"But that's not the point," she went on. "You never promised me anything. You never asked me to wait, never even hinted that you wanted me to. If I had any expectations for what would happen when...it was all over...then I came up with them by myself."

There was that word again, expectations.

"That's not entirely true," he argued. "I seem to recall dragging you to a beach and trying to tell you what you meant to me. And I further remember telling you I loved you during a particularly tense operation of mine. And then there was the flirting, the banter, all the nights I spent sleeping in your office while you were working..." He smiled a little at the memories. "If you had expectations, Teresa, so did I."

She considered this for a moment. "Well, can we at least agree that none of our expectations was a two year separation after the CBI was dissolved?" Her words were meant to be light, but he knew there was pain behind them.

He smiled, then carefully didn't think about his next words, knowing they would likely scare the life out of him. "Do you think we should talk about our expectations now?"

He had resolved to be honest, open. Even so, he was acutely aware of how much she could hurt him if she so chose. Perhaps it wasn't that _she_ could hurt him, but the idea that he _could_ be hurt, that he would willingly make himself vulnerable that way.

"I don't know," she answered. "Should we even have expectations?" It wasn't a rhetorical question. Lisbon, never sure of her own relationships, had clearly read something in a magazine that had warned her about such things.

"Debatable," he answered, draining the rest of his wine. "But I'm sure there are things you want." His voice softened. "I have things I want, too. It's not like we just started thinking about being in a relationship yesterday."

"No," she agreed, a bit self-deprecatingly. Then, "You go first."

"Coward," he teased, but kissed her quickly to take the edge from his words. "Fine." He took his own deep breath and plunged ahead. "I want you," he told her. "All of you, all the time. If you want to move slowly, I will, of course, but if I had my way, you wouldn't be out of my sight for longer than ten minutes." He pushed a wayward strand of her hair behind her ears. "I want to fall asleep with you every night and wake up to you every morning. Or, you know, at three am when we get an emergency call from work."

Her eyes were wet, one tear making a slow descent down her pale cheek. "I want that, too," she whispered thickly.

He smiled again, feeling like he did when she had told him she felt the same way he did. God, had that only been a few hours ago? "What else do you want?" he prompted, though much softer now.

"Truth," she replied, a great deal of weight behind that single word.

"I know you do." He held her gaze. "And I know that, more than anything, that's where I've failed you before now. I can't tell you that I'm suddenly going to be able to change the way I've behaved the entire time you've know me, but I do promise to try."

She set her now-empty wine glass down with a small clink. "I can live with that." Compromise was apparently another term she'd leaned from Cosmopolitan.

"I'm sorry you have to," he said.

She frowned, and he went on. "I'm sorry that I can't give you what you want, not fully, at least not now." He could feel a small edge of hysteria touch him, compel him to speak more. "I've just spent so long keeping people away from me, or keeping myself away from people, that it's so ingrained in me that I'm not sure I know how to break the habit. I want to," he added. "I want to so badly, to simply tell you, just you, what I'm thinking or what I'm doing."

Properly concerned now, Lisbon touched his face. He leaned into her hand. "On the plane," she said, "you told me that the idea of letting anyone close to you was terrifying."

"_Yes_," he said, closing his eyes. There was a dark hallway behind them, ending with a firmly shut door. Before it could open, his wrenched his lids up, focusing on the clear green of her gaze. "Teresa," he whispered, and it was a choked sound, "I just..."

He couldn't continue. Shaking, struggling for composure, he scrubbed a hand through his hair. He could feel the fear he'd told her about washing through his veins. The cracks in his crudely mended heart seemed more pronounced, like a soft wind could scatter them. His urge was to hide, to retreat.

But she wanted the truth.

She _deserved_ the truth.

"There's a certain kind of security in losing your entire family," he said, not looking at her. "What else could happen to you? There's nothing that could be worse, nothing that could hurt you again." He could feel the moisture streaking down his face. "But now I could lose you, too. And I think that would be as bad."

"Jane," she murmured, "Patrick. You're not going to lose me."

Finally, he looked at her, hiding precisely nothing. "Angela thought the same thing." Dimly, he was aware that this was the first time he had ever referred to her by name in Lisbon's presence.

She moved, arms going around his shoulders, pulling him down to her until his head was pillowed on her chest. "Shh," she whispered, stroking his hair. "It's okay, I promise."

It took him a confused second to realize he was crying, really crying.

The fear was selfish, he knew that. He was hurting Lisbon by keeping her apart; he knew that, too. But it had seemed such a necessary step, before.

"Sorry," he breathed. "I'm sorry."

"Hush," she told him. So he did.

Instead, he let himself just exist. She was warm, soft, a haven. And she loved him. By her own admission, had loved him for years. And she was still here, still alive.

Something loosened inside him, and he sat up, looking at her with red-rimmed eyes. "In case you didn't know," he said, trying for casual, "I'm sort of a wreck. Emotionally, mentally, I'm a mess. I don't mean just today, though that's certainly true as well."

She raised both eyebrows. "No kidding?"

"No kidding," he verified with half of a wry smile. "But I want you enough, I love you enough, to do everything I can to...clean myself up, so to speak. To be a better man for you."

He didn't know what his face looked like, but Lisbon seemed riveted. When she moved suddenly, he wasn't expecting it.

A little clumsily, she climbed on to his lap, running her fingers through his hair, pushing it back, forcing him to tip his head to meet her eyes.

"Just so you know," she said, still smoothing his curls. "I'd still take you just the way you are, emotional baggage and pain in the ass tendencies included."

She kissed him forcefully, and he responded without conscious thought, letting his body and his heart finally do what they wanted. He slipped his palms under her shirt, running a finger up her spine, loving it when she shivered.

Her hands rested on his shoulders for a second, then began to work on his buttons. Somewhere, a warning bell went off, telling him that as much as he wanted her (and he _wanted_ her), maybe they should give it, oh, at least another few hours.

"Teresa," he managed to get out, trying to put his hesitation in her name. In contrast, his hold on her tightened.

"Shut up," she whispered back, and he smiled against her lips. "God, I just want to touch you."

He wasn't sure she knew she had said the last part out loud.

It didn't seem to matter, not now.

They both groaned when her hands slid over the bared planes of his chest.

He wanted to touch her, too. And so he did, cupping her breasts and memorizing the way they fit in his palms.

She shifted, straddling him, and he groaned again for a different reason, one he was sure she could feel.

"I want you," he told her, remembering that she had requested truth.

And he said he wanted all of her. She met his eyes, knowing that she remembered his words, too.

She shimmied off his lap, reaching for his hands instantly, not giving him time to worry that she was leaving without him. When she pulled, he went with her, stopping a few feet away. He toppled her into the bed gently, then crawled in beside her.

They were exhausted and fragile, both of them, but she held him with all of her strength, and he gave her what they both wanted, moving inside of her, his name falling from her lips, their hands entwined above her head.

After, she fell asleep almost immediately, draped over him warmly. He kept his eyes open just long enough to tuck a blanket around her shoulders, then pushed his nose into her hair and slept.

When they woke, it was dark, the shadows in the trailer falling over them.

He smiled at her, rubbing their noses together. This, touching her whenever he wanted, was intoxicating.

"I love you," she murmured sleepily, cuddling closer.

"I love you," he said back, curving a hand over the back of her head.

The fear inside of him was quiet now. He wasn't stupid enough to think that it would disappear completely in the space of a day, but he was willing to entertain the possibility that this was something he would be able to defeat in time, at least mostly.

He wanted more days like these, more days with Lisbon's hands moving over him, her soft lips on his, her sweet presence protecting him from some of his most notable demons.

Yes, he wanted them.

In fact, he _expected_ them.

Fancy that.


End file.
